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Had my first practice this evening and it was a lot of fun! 7 players showed up, all girls – none of the boys came today. Some of them had the basics of throwing and catching, but most didn’t really have any football skills at all, but it didn’t take long for them to at least grasp the most basic concepts, as well as catch well thrown balls most of the time. Oddly enough, one of the most consistently difficult things for the players was a clean snap exchange from C to QB.
They loved the competitive drills – one of the simplest was to have them pair up about 8 yards apart, and throw it back and forth, and whichever pair could go the longest without dropping the ball won. At one point I did a drill that kept a couple of them on the sidelines – even if they rotate, I could tell they were getting bored, so I need to make sure every drill keeps them all occupied.
Anyway, thanks for all the input – I had a lot of fun and look forward to the next practice.
At some point you may need to remind enthusiastic parents that there will be no college scouts at the game this week.
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Flag football has almost no blocking so your plays have to account for this. Run everything out of the shotgun. Practice your snap counts so you can vary them and surprise the defense. Running plays work best because they are the quickest. The option is a very useful play. Pretty much every pass should be a sprint out. Keep all your routes to the same side of the field. Bubble screens and halfback passes are good plays. Reverses, flea flickers and even jet sweeps usually take too long and don’t work. The jump pass is a good option in short yardage.
This right here will make you a good coach.
It is a game, and the players are there to have fun. As long as the team is having fun, they will generate their own intensity and the wins will come–at least enough to keep the nutjob parents off your back.
One of my favorite moments in coaching over 20 seasons of youth sports was when a female player in your age range asked off the field, and, after giving her a little time to gather herself, when I went to ask how she was doing and what was wrong, found out that she wanted off the field to get to her phone because her and her best friend were debating if the AR on the spectator sidelines was hot or not and if she should ask him out.
Your players are going to have different priorities than you, and that is a given.
Enjoy it, and everything will be fine.
My expertise is in coaching youth baseball, but you have hit on an incredibly important point. You only have the players for about an hour each practice, so anytime they are not actively learning is wasted - and they get bored quickly. I address this by having 3 drill stations going at the same time, ideally one each for hitting, throwing and fielding. With only 8 players 2 stations will work fine. A one hour practice schedule looks like this:
5 minutes -group warm up, sport specific stretches/exercises that mimic actual skills
36-40 minutes - rotate through each station, 12 minutes each (18-20 minutes with 2 stations). Each 12 minute station should be 3 minutes of teaching, 7 minutes of drills, 2 minutes competition. Each person can get in a lot of reps in 7 minutes and they look forward to the competitive portion.
15-20 minutes - group drill/play run-throughs/running
If you have 1.5 hours, expand each time slot accordingly. This gives you an efficient practice, a ton of reps and no one has time to get bored. You do need 1-2 assistants or parents to run stations. Ideally, they run them all and you roam and coach.
Good luck!